A Curious Anniversary

Anniversaries are celebrated in different ways, but seldom can there have been a parallel to the way the Protestant Episcopal Church has honored the final acceptance of the Thirty-Nine Articles by the English Convocation and Parliament in 1571. Having for many years relegated the articles to an obscure place in small print in the Prayer Book, this church has in the anniversary year brought out an experimental liturgy from which the articles are omitted altogether. Perhaps this is at least honest, for what many of the clergy and people know about the articles seems to be infinitesimal. All the same, it is strange and regrettable that the articles should be treated this way, and the possible consequences are grave in the extreme.

It is strange because the Protestant Episcopal Church regards itself as a Catholic body, and in many respects the articles are a solid reaffirmation of Catholic (as distinct from Roman Catholic) teaching. By formal endorsement the doctrine of the early creeds is incorporated into the structure of Anglican doctrine. The historical canon of Scripture is accepted with a distinction between the Hebrew and Greek books of the Old Testament derived from Jerome. As in the early fathers, only what is found in Holy Scripture is to be regarded and taught as necessary to salvation; the conclusions of councils as well as individual theologians are brought under this rule. When medieval errors are rejected, it is because they are uncatholic as well as unbiblical. They are inventions or innovations representing a departure from the primitive church. While it is not explicitly stated, the thesis of Cranmer and Jewel, and indeed of Zwingli and Calvin, implicitly underlies the articles. The medieval aberration, not the Reformation, is the “new learning.” The point of the Reformation is to get back behind this to the real “old learning.” One would have thought that the Protestant Episcopal Church would gladly have paid its respects to this thesis underlying the articles. That they should rather be dropped out of sight is strange indeed.

And it is not only strange but also regrettable. For if the Thirty-Nine Articles endorse early teaching, they also embody some of the new insights into the biblical message that are the distinctive contribution of the Reformation.

In part these new insights derive, as we have seen, from an application of historical doctrine to medieval teaching and practice. Augustinian teaching on sin, grace, and predestination cuts across much of the distortion of the later medieval church. The christological understanding of the eucharist, based on the work of Hilary and Theodoret, provides both a decisive criticism of transubstantiation and a luminous, profound, and biblical alternative to it.

In part, however, these insights into the biblical message found in the Thirty-Nine Articles are genuinely new insights resulting from a more scientific study of Scripture and its application to complicated developments in theology. The doctrine of justification is the most obvious example. In relation to this, it is tragic and astonishing that Episcopalians should value their heritage so lightly just when Roman Catholics like Hans Küng have come to appreciate, understand, and very largely accept the Reformation witness. It is also regrettable that they should abandon it at a time when it has very pertinent implications for such matters as the subjectivism of modern liberal theology and the contemporary activism that so often fails to grapple with the proper relation of indicative and imperative in the Christian life.

Another instance of new insight is found in the articles’ extended definition of the Church in relation to its ministry of the word and sacrament. This is not meant to replace the four “notes” (unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity) of the ancient creed. But it does provide a dynamic definition in which the Church is also related to its mission. To be the Church, the Church must be doing what it is meant to do. At a time when the Church suffers from a confusion of role or identity, it is particularly unfortunate that this definition should be ejected even from the basement. Is it so mistaken, so self-evident, or so generally irrelevant that we can now afford to disregard it?

The banishing of the articles is strange and regrettable; it can also have very serious consequences. An obvious danger is that a church which ignores its historic landmarks is much inclined to repeat its mistakes. Up to a point it will probably do this in any case. But it is one thing to do so with past discussions in view and another to do it as though for the first time. Already the new books of our day are full of “original” and usually not very helpful ideas that, though they are hundreds of years old, the brilliant explorers of the present seem to have missed in their theological training. The relevant modern church is thus condemned to the tiresome repetition of old aberrations simply because it has fallen victim to the illusion that what is past is outdated and irrelevant. When there is so much exciting work to do, not only in winning authentically new insights from Scripture but also in applying the insights of the past to changing situations, nothing could be more sterile and unprofitable than repeating the cycle of old and avoidable error.

A second and related danger is that the door will open to a full-scale relativism in which subsidiary standards can no longer do their proper work. The context of the dropping of the articles makes this clear. In some Anglican circles there has always been a tendency to use the liturgy as a doctrinal standard, and it is pertinent that an experimental revision of the prayer book, which can also be the occasion for introducing new doctrinal content or emphasis, should go hand in hand with a quiet dumping of the articles. The point is that the proper function of the articles is to act as an objective theological reference by which all else, including the implications of liturgical revision, should be tested. Without the articles, individual or partisan positions can easily be slipped in either to the perversion or to the confusion of the church.

In other denominations, of course, the same thing may be done in different ways. Presbyterians relativized their confession by associating it with several others, including the new and dated creed of 1967. Practical changes may also be made in worship, ministerial techniques, or organization that are not thought out theologically but will have theological implications, and will thus serve to change the real theological position whether given confessional status or not. The absence or ignoring of confessions obviously hastens this process of change, and may in some cases be used for this very purpose.

Honoring a confession can, of course, result in rigidity, but it does not have to do so. The possibility of revision is always open. Again, new issues arise on which there may be new insights, as at the time of the Reformation itself. In the long run a new confession may have to be worked out that can still incorporate historic teaching. But in the meantime the findings of the past act as an objective control, not of an absolute kind, but in the form of an agreed interpretation of the biblical norm that can check uncontrolled relativism in new theological, liturgical, or practical work.

A final and again a related danger is that ignoring the articles might mean a virtual end to serious scientific theology. Not the least value of historical theology is that the most significant theologians of the past really think and work theologically in contrast to many modern writers who substitute subjective or speculative philosophizing, or phenomenological religious investigation, or a purely historicist study of Scripture, for authentic theology. Now past theology can be presented in an abstruse, theoretical, and sterile form that robs it of vitality and power. It can also be advanced as a legal norm that creates impatience and revolt. In itself, however, the theology of the past that has survived is in the main an exemplary attempt at theology scientifically related to its object and allowing itself to be shaped and controlled by this rather than by subjective considerations, preconceptions, or requirements.

Very easily, then, abandonment of the articles may denote or become a rejection of all serious theological method, an opening of the gates to real theological irrelevance, and an end to authentic theology in the church. The modern Episcopal church is very vulnerable at this point, for years of confessional neglect have already produced a situation in which dogmatics counts for little and a-theologians are increasingly dominating the scene, unwittingly helped by those who pursue serious theology but have never come to appreciate, or perhaps to understand, the Reformation contribution. But the Episcopal church is by no means alone at this point. It is accompanied by many other churches that have never had confessions at all, or have seriously compromised them, or are in immature revolt against them, or carry on their business as if the confessions did not exist.

Certainly a purely formal honoring of the Thirty-Nine Articles would serve no useful purpose. But if elimination of the articles is more forthright, one may still see in it both a symptom of the contemporary malaise and an evil omen for the theological and practical future of the churches. An honest or even an honestly enquiring commemoration would be more to the point.

Geoffrey W. Bromiley is professor of church history and historical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He holds the M.A. from Cambridge University and the Ph.D. and D.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh.

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